Oct 9, 2026 · 41 min · 13 segments
What happens when a $100 million startup is forced to reinvent itself? David Abbey shares how he scaled Penny AI across 60 countries, raised more than $30 million, and navigated a difficult pivot that…
Well, you know, talk about what you saw change in the landscape, let's say in the, in the most recent years now.
What problem were you solving that companies were paying for at Penny AI? And then talk about Endless, like what's the transition there? What, what was the through line?
So by definition, that is companies like Tupperware, Tupper- companies like Rodan and Fields or Nu Skin that look at, uh, independent sellers, distributed sales force, whatever you wanna call them.
And any company that has an independent contractor, even real estate would be an example or insurance.
The, the parent company owns an immense amount of data and their field doesn't have access to it to use it in a really intelligent way.
And where we, the opportunity we saw was to take the data from these companies, and this was back in 2018, so this is kind of the introduction of machine learning where big data kind of got a new name, certainly not generative yet.
And it was taking that information and then telling them what to do with it every day, and that's the intelligent CRM portion of it, and hence Penny, the persona of your personal assistant.
And when you take a company that has 100,000 distribute sellers or, you know, upwards of, you know, millions even in some cases, you mobilize a field by literally removing the guesswork and allow them to focus on, like, "Hey, here's the things that you can do in your business today that are gonna drive revenue." Right? This is every operator's dream.
And we would go toe-to-toe with Salesforce, and in a number of cases, we actually replaced them because Salesforce is a beautiful, brilliant industry standard CRM, but it wasn't built for that type of model.
So because we were purpose-built and very focused, we were able to go into these multinational, you know, billion-dollar corporations and provide a solution that solves a real problem for them.
And, you know, customer activation and customer retention for those companies are key at the end of the day, and that's one thing we were able to do incredibly well.
So in today's world now with Endless, is that the focus for your company?
So in 2023, 2024, when everybody, you know, returned to work, everybody that had joined, um, and was working in that direct selling industry because they needed a job and, you know, the front lines closed, they all started returning to work.
And that industry, unfortunately, over the last few years, has been severely impacted just because it's the rise of the influencer economy changes the landscape, the, the demographic of individuals that would've been in, in that industry going back to the '80s, '90s, early 2000s were starting to age out into baby boomers, and the next generation coming in were content creators.
Well, you know, talk about what you saw change in the landscape, let's say in the, in the most recent years now.
What problem were you solving that companies were paying for at Penny AI? And then talk about Endless, like what's the transition there? What, what was the through line?
So by definition, that is companies like Tupperware, Tupper- companies like Rodan and Fields or Nu Skin that look at, uh, independent sellers, distributed sales force, whatever you wanna call them.
And any company that has an independent contractor, even real estate would be an example or insurance.
The, the parent company owns an immense amount of data and their field doesn't have access to it to use it in a really intelligent way.
And where we, the opportunity we saw was to take the data from these companies, and this was back in 2018, so this is kind of the introduction of machine learning where big data kind of got a new name, certainly not generative yet.
And it was taking that information and then telling them what to do with it every day, and that's the intelligent CRM portion of it, and hence Penny, the persona of your personal assistant.
And when you take a company that has 100,000 distribute sellers or, you know, upwards of, you know, millions even in some cases, you mobilize a field by literally removing the guesswork and allow them to focus on, like, "Hey, here's the things that you can do in your business today that are gonna drive revenue." Right? This is every operator's dream.
And we would go toe-to-toe with Salesforce, and in a number of cases, we actually replaced them because Salesforce is a beautiful, brilliant industry standard CRM, but it wasn't built for that type of model.
So because we were purpose-built and very focused, we were able to go into these multinational, you know, billion-dollar corporations and provide a solution that solves a real problem for them.
And, you know, customer activation and customer retention for those companies are key at the end of the day, and that's one thing we were able to do incredibly well.
So in today's world now with Endless, is that the focus for your company?
So in 2023, 2024, when everybody, you know, returned to work, everybody that had joined, um, and was working in that direct selling industry because they needed a job and, you know, the front lines closed, they all started returning to work.
And that industry, unfortunately, over the last few years, has been severely impacted just because it's the rise of the influencer economy changes the landscape, the, the demographic of individuals that would've been in, in that industry going back to the '80s, '90s, early 2000s were starting to age out into baby boomers, and the next generation coming in were content creators.
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